Re: [PATCHv2] Add per-process flag to control thp

[Andrew Morton]

On Fri, 2 Aug 2013 15:57:35 -0500 Alex Thorlton <athorlton@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> This patch implements functionality to allow processes to disable the use of
> transparent hugepages through the prctl syscall.
> 
> We've determined that some jobs perform significantly better with thp disabled,
> and we needed a way to control thp on a per-process basis, without relying on
> madvise.

What everyone else said, plus...

I worry about the inherit-across-fork thing.  A scenario we should
think about is where the user doesn't build his own executables.  So he
writes a little wrapper which runs prctl(PR_SET_THP_DISABLED, 0) then
execs the third-party-app.  But what happens if that app execs children
who *do* want THP?  He has to hunt down and wrap those as well?

It all seems a bit unwieldy.  I wonder if controlling it via the ELF
header would be more practical.


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